Running out of stock: what to do when you're two weeks from empty

You don't need a hero move. You need a triage list. Your PO is late, the shelf has about two weeks left, and there are only six realistic options: expedite the whole order by air, air-freight a partial top-up, sell it as a preorder, run a waitlist, substitute-and-reprice around the gap, or hide the listing. Ranked by how many dark days each buys per dollar, a partial air bridge plus demand capture beats the full expedite most of the time — the full expedite everyone panics into is usually the most expensive way to protect demand you could have kept for a third of the cost. Here's the sequence, with the arithmetic.

Before any option: replace the panic number with the real gap

Everything below is judged against one number most merchants never actually compute: how many days of demand stand between now and the truck arriving.

Worked example, illustrative throughout: you sell reflective dog harnesses. The red medium — DGH-RFL-RED — is your top seller at 11 units a day over the trailing 30 days (all in stock, so the velocity is clean). You have 165 on the shelf. You are 27 days into a PO the supplier quoted at 21, and this morning's update says the goods leave the factory in about 10 days, with 24 days of ocean and customs behind that.

• Days of cover: 165 ÷ 11 = 15 days
• Days until sellable stock: 10 + 24 = 34 days
• The real gap: 34 − 15 = 19 days of demand with no stock: 19 × 11 = 209 units

That 19-day, 209-unit gap is the board you're playing on. If your own gap is 4 days, half of these options are overkill. If it's 40, some of them are unavailable. Compute yours before choosing anything.

The six options, ranked for this situation

For the worked example, ranked by dark days removed per dollar, then adjusted for risk:

Option 1: the partial air top-up — the default for a top seller

Don't air the order. Air a bridge. Cover 12 of the 19 gap days: 12 × 11 = 132 units, roughly 3 cartons, call it 60 kg. At an illustrative $6.50/kg premium over ocean on this lane, that's 60 × 6.50 ≈ $390 estimated to remove 12 dark days — about $33 per dark day removed. Compare the value side: 11 units a day × $31 retail × ~50% gross margin ≈ $170 estimated gross profit per day protected. That trade is not close.

The catch: this only exists if the factory agrees to split the shipment — finished cartons go by air now, the balance sails as planned. Ask today, in writing, and get carton counts and weights so your forwarder can quote the same day. The air-vs-sea comparison covers the mode economics and when full air actually beats ocean.

Option 2: preorder against the inbound PO

If the transit schedule is confirmed in writing, you can keep selling against it with honest ship dates: buyers order now, you ship when the container clears. This removes zero dark days — every sale still waits — but it converts the gap from lost demand into deferred demand. The split between preorder and backorder mechanics, and which fits which situation, is its own decision; the preorder-vs-backorder comparison covers it. One rule: never promise a date you don't have from the supplier or forwarder in writing.

Option 3: the waitlist

Close purchases, capture demand. A waitlist turns "sold out" into an email list you can buy against — and, just as usefully, a real count of how much demand the gap is actually suppressing. It costs nothing and it pairs with everything else on this list. Its weakness is honest: capture is imperfect, and some buyers never return. Treat the waitlist as a fraction of the gap, not the whole fix — which is why it usually runs alongside option 1 rather than replacing it. Setup options live in the Shopify waitlist guide.

Option 4: substitute and reprice — shape demand with price

Two moves, zero cash. First, push the adjacent colorway: the olive harness (DGH-RFL-OLV) has 240 on hand at 3/day — a small bundle incentive or a homepage slot moves some red demand onto it. Second, raise the red's price ~15%, from $31 to about $36, to slow the burn and fatten the margin on the last units. If velocity drops by a quarter, the shelf lasts 165 ÷ 8.25 ≈ 20 days instead of 15 — you just bought 5–6 days, about 60 units of gap, for nothing. The honest caveat: how demand responds to a price move is not knowable in advance. Watch it daily and be ready to revert.

Option 5: the full expedite — when it's actually right

Air all 600 remaining units: 9 cartons, ~180 kg, × $6.50 ≈ $1,170 estimated premium, arrival in ~10 days, all 19 dark days removed at about $62 per dark day. Worth it when the SKU is a disproportionate share of revenue, a gift-window deadline is absolute, or the factory refuses to split. Otherwise the partial bridge plus demand capture does the same protective work for roughly a third of the cash — which is why full expedite sits at #5, not #1.

Option 6: hide the listing — the last resort

Delisting stops the support tickets, and it also stops everything else. Sessions hit a dead end, rank decays, and the demand leaves with no record — some of those shoppers buy elsewhere, some substitute, and some leave with their budget unspent. Hiding with no capture mechanism attached converts all of that into demand you'll never see. Hide only when restock is far out and you have no waitlist; the mechanics and the cases where hiding is right live in the guide to hiding sold-out products. And before you decide anything, it's worth knowing what an out-of-stock listing already costs you while it sits there dark.

The sequence under pressure

When the gap is real and the clock is running, run this in order:

1. Recompute the gap (5 minutes): on hand ÷ true daily velocity; true arrival date from the supplier's latest words, not the original quote.
2. Ask about the split shipment (parallel, in writing): cartons available now, weights, air quote from your forwarder.
3. Make the price move (2 minutes): raise the tight SKU, feature the substitute.
4. Flip the waitlist on if there's no split or the bridge won't fully cover.
5. Open preorders only once dates are confirmed in writing.
6. Full air only for the crown-jewel SKU.
7. Hide only if capture is impossible and restock is distant.

Steps 1–3 cost you nothing and are reversible. Most stores do step 6 first and skip 3 and 4 entirely — that's the expensive version of the same afternoon.

So this never happens twice

Every crisis restock is downstream of a number that went stale: a lead time that was a quote, a reorder point built on it, and no alarm until the shelf was nearly bare. The fix is boring: measured lead times per supplier, reorder points that use them, and an alert that fires while there are still weeks to act. That's the gap InventoryX (in development) (our app) works in — a per-SKU ledger of out-of-stock days, risk alerts with an estimated dollar figure attached, and a Monday buying list built on lead times you enter by hand. It doesn't forecast promo spikes and it won't learn your lead times from PO history; it makes the math that failed here visible every week. If the failure was structural, and it usually is, that's the fix.

Common questions

What should I do first when a product is running out of stock? Compute the real gap before anything else: on-hand units divided by true daily velocity, minus the days until sellable stock actually arrives. Every option — air freight, preorder, waitlist, reprice, hide — is sized and ranked against that number, and skipping the step is how merchants buy the most expensive fix instead of the right one.

Is air freight worth it for a restock? When the cost per dark day removed is well below the gross profit per day the SKU earns. In the worked example, a 60 kg partial bridge cost about $33 per day removed against roughly $170 per day protected — while airing everything cost $62 per day for days a waitlist and a price move could have covered cheaply.

Should I preorder or waitlist when something is out of stock? Preorder when the arrival date is confirmed in writing and the product is standard — buyers accept a known wait. Waitlist when dates are soft or the gap is short. They combine: preorder the confident buyers, waitlist the rest, and you keep demand on the books instead of losing it silently.

How do I stop a product from selling out mid-promo? After the fire: raise price on the tight SKU, cap quantities, and steer demand to substitutes. Structurally: measure your real lead time instead of trusting the quote, set reorder points from it, and make sure something alerts you while cover is still measured in weeks rather than days.

When should I hide a sold-out product from my store? Only when restock is distant, you have no waitlist or preorder mechanism, and the listing generates support load worth more than the sessions it would capture. Otherwise keep it live with capture on — hidden listings shed search rank and sessions that take months to rebuild.

Next step

Run the gap math on your own top SKU today: on hand ÷ daily velocity, then days until the inbound PO is sellable. If the difference is under two weeks, call your supplier about a split shipment before you do anything else — it's the option with the best price per dark day and an expiration date. While you wait on their reply, get the waitlist on; the demand it captures is the cheapest inventory you'll ever "buy."